Open ballot?

THE government has floated a proposal to end the secret ballot in the Senate elections in order to bring greater transparency to the electoral exercise for the upper house. These proposals are part of a larger set of electoral reforms that were placed before the federal cabinet recently. In a press conference, federal ministers Shafqat Mehmood and Azam Swati said efforts would be made to have a broad-based consensus on these electoral reforms so that constitutional changes could be made accordingly. The two ministers were part of a parliamentary committee formed to look into allegations of rigging in the 2018 elections. The opposition, however, did not take part in the proceedings, and ultimately, the committee focused on drawing up a list of electoral reforms.

The proposal to make the Senate election an open one makes sense in the context of manipulations that have happened in the past. These elections often attract accusations of horse-trading and in the past PTI also took action against some of its members from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who were found to have been involved in selling their votes in the Senate elections. Similarly, the election for the chairman of the Senate was also weighed down by controversy when a number of votes shifted across party lines. Due to secret balloting in these elections, various pressure groups have also been able to influence votes and outcomes. This lack of transparency continues to cast a dark shadow over the upper house. Therefore, an attempt to reform the...